In Agency's Struggles, Historic Echoes

By MANDY LOCKE

This is not the first time Martha's Vineyard Community
Services has faced the predicament it struggles with now.

Twenty-year-old recollections paint a familiar picture of the
current battles at the Island's largest health and human services
agency.

The early 1980s brought an exhaustive two-year clash between nurses
and the agency's leaders. Forces inside and outside of the agency
claimed the nursing group could financially flourish outside the
umbrella of Community Services. Complaints of meager wages by a newly
formed nurses union intensified the fight. Mediation failed. The story
ended with mass resignations and the creation of a rival home nursing
service.

Those at the helm of Community Services 20 years ago still shudder
when they recall this period in the life of the agency.

"It was a very difficult time," said Kerry Allen, a
former Community Services board member who served during that era.
"It split the board right down the middle. People stopped talking
to one another. It got very personal, very ugly."

Community Services' overall financials in 2003 are a bit
different today than 20 years ago. Both Island Counseling Center and
Visiting Nurse Services, according to management, operate at a loss,
kept afloat only by fundraising dollars solicited by the
organization's leaders.

But once again, the agency finds itself in a duel.

Mental health counselors, after a year of tense contract
negotiations between their union representatives and management, are
threatening to strike. As they sort through the details of the newest
rift, some community members are asking if a cautionary tale can be
crafted from the tensions of 1983.

"If you don't know history, you will repeat it. People
forget. They lose sight. They are so in the moment, they don't see
what's coming," said Michael Joyce, also involved in
Community Services leadership during the 1980s.

During a six-month stretch in 1983, 17 of the 30 home health aides
at Visiting Nurse Services quit. The struggles within the agency's
largest program came to a head that October with the heated resignation
of Barbara Fuller, VNS director. The board split 13 to 12 over the
acceptance of her resignation.

Ms. Fuller questioned the structure of the patchwork agency, the
leaders of which were in the process of tightening a somewhat loose
collaboration between five different programs. VNS footed half of the
agency's overall administrative budget and some resented the
financial dependence of Community Services on its program.

In the background, at least one local board of health - in
Tisbury - canceled its contract with VNS to provide home visits to
new mothers and elderly residents, saying the town could no longer
depend on the agency to deliver care because of staff shortages.

Nurses were poised to splinter from Community Services - a
breakaway bankrolled by $200,000 pledged by private citizens.

A last-ditch effort to settle wage problems and structure issues
came under guidance of a federal labor mediator. After four sessions,
talks broke down, and the mediator declared the nurses and the agency
had "irreconcilable differences."

More than half the nurses of VNS quit in the fall of 1984 to create
Home Health Care Services of Martha's Vineyard, a nonprofit agency
which later became Vineyard Nursing Association. Vineyard Nursing
Association and Visiting Nurse Services now compete for clients in the
Island market.

"It's like we've turned back the clock to that
period with VNA," said Patricia Costa, a former board member of
Community Services. "The only people who will be hurt is the
public."

Current contract negotiations between management and staff at Island
Counseling Center and Visiting Nurse Services began more than a year
ago. The unresolved issue is wages - a sticking point that has
intensified negotiations since April. Union leaders and mental health
counselors now say that a strike is in the works unless management
budges from its original compensation package of a 2.5 per cent cost of
living increase. Staff demands an average of 15 per cent salary
increases.

Their complaints echo some of the complaints murmured by nurses more
than 20 years ago. Wages are too low. Turnover is high. Programs are
suffering. Some staff members are wondering aloud whether the agency is
waiting for them to leave. They, too, are taking aim at the
agency's leaders.

The stand off is expected to come to a head during the annual
Community Services board meeting Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. in the
Agricultural Hall in West Tisbury. The union has said it will announce
during the meeting whether or not counselors will move ahead with a
strike.

Staff members have been readying clients for possible disruption in
their treatment schedule. Several counselors are planning to treat
patients in their private offices during a strike.

Some community members fear that the groundwork has been laid for
another splinter within Community Services.

"The seed is there for a similar type of competitive
agency," said Mr. Alley. "There are so many counselors
trying to make a living on the Vineyard, to have a competitive agency
doesn't bode well."

Certainly, the 1980s fracture did not cripple Community Services.
But even shortly after the split, some in the health and human services
agency questioned the wisdom of the community supporting two nonprofit
home nursing agencies.

Anthony DiGuida, former administrator for Community Services
Visiting Nurse Services, said in a 1985 interview with the Gazette:
"It doesn't make sense for two non-profits to be competing
with one another. Right now there are three agencies off-loading their
administrative costs on the community.

"It doesn't make sense, and the person it hurts the most is
the consumer. And what I think the other agencies are all finding out is
that it's not as easy to build a surplus. It's tough,"
he said.